Following the Government’s weekend announcement that places of worship will be permitted to reopen for individual prayer from the week beginning Monday 15th June, York Minster will reopen for individual prayer starting on Tuesday 16th June.
The Minster will be open from 4.30 to 6.30pm, Tuesdays to Saturday and 2.30 to 4.30pm on Sunday for people to come in, light a candle and speak to a member of the Clergy if they need pastoral support and care.
The Minster will be closed on Mondays for the time being.
Social distancing protocols will be in place.
The Minster is expected to announce how it will respond to any further government relaxation of restrictions including the recommencement of services and more general events aimed at the broader local community
In the meantime services are available to view on line and via zoom.
The York Council has published for the first time its post lockdown strategy. The report was considered and agreed today. There was no prior consultation.
The Council has decided to make Coppergate one way (east to west) cutting one of the City’s key bus routes for the next 6 months “or until a vaccine is available”. Cyclists will be able to continue to use the street in both directions although, at the “pinch point” near the Coppergate centre entrance, this may compromise social distancing objectives.
The Council strategy says there will be, ”Active discouragement of the use of public transport and the promotion of walking and cycling”. (Paradoxically the Council has also announced today a bid for funding for more electric buses)
The Council isn’t expecting many retail workers to return to City centre jobs much before December. Restaurant and pub (hospitality) workers may be out of a job for even longer.
More local and county residents are expected to start to visit the City centre from the autumn together with smaller numbers of day visitors from other parts of the region. Later they will be joined by tourists from other parts of the country.
International tourists are not expected to return in any numbers before the late Spring of 2021.
The “strategy” pointedly does not propose a marketing plan aimed at actually promoting the City, and its key visitor/retail economy, over the next few months.
The Council leaders plan involves the closure of the key (for the retail economy) Castle car park without its planned multi storey replacement being opened at St Georges Field.
The notoriously unreliable “pay on exit” mechanisms will also be rolled out to all car parks – negating the social distancing preferred option of contactless payment via smart phone Apps.
The strategy offers little for the suburbs. The option of encouraging devolved open air markets is not even mentioned. There is no publicity support on offer for neighbourhood businesses. More cycle parking is, however, promised.
Many may have sympathy with a key message included in the strategy which “proposes to invest and make bold interventions to create new networks of park and cycle hubs, priority cycle routes, subsidised cycle hire and cycle parking to prioritise active travel”.
Those reading further will see that there are no actions proposed to address the natural barriers to two wheeled transport (poor infrastructure, uneven highways, obstructed paths, etc.) Much less does the statement recognised that some sections of the community because of distance, fitness, luggage or just poor weather, simply don’t have a realistic two wheeled travel option.
No forecasts of modal change are included. The Council simply doesn’t seem to know what effect implementing such a rag bag of tactical polices might have.
So we judge the document to be a profoundly superficial and disappointing proposal shuffled into the light of day with no prior consultation and apparently lacking even sensitivity to the difficult choices now facing many sections of the community.
Hopefully work will have already started on producing something more convincing. First step should be to regain the trust and supportl of local residents.
A report on the number of additional homes provided in the City last year has been published. There has been no public consideration of the figures
There were 560 net completions in 2019/20
In addition, the report reveals that there were a total of 3,466 housing planning consents given. This is by far the largest single year number of permissions recorded in the last 10 years. However the total depends heavily on the approval of 2500 homes at the York central site
It is estimated that around 550 additional homes are required each year to meet internally generated demand (Excess of births over deaths in the City plus a continuing drift towards smaller households).
Higher Local Plan figures rest on attracting more inward migrants to the City which in turn is driven by the job numbers generated by high economic growth forecasts.
These forecasts were pre COVID and are unlikely to become a reality in the near future.
Nevertheless, the City now does have sufficient planning permission identified to take the pressure off development greenfield land.
NB. There will always be around 100 “windfall” approvals for small housing sites each year which need to be added to the completion numbers.
The Council claims to have caught up with the backlog of recycling collections from earlier in the week. Still issues in Huntington, Clifton, and Strensall
Thursday 12 June
All sheduled household waste has been collected as ususal.
We were unable to collect recycling from some areas in Huntington and Clifton due to operating under COVID-19 restrictions.
This recycling will be collected on Friday 12 June. Please present your containers for collection by 7.00am.
We’ve collected outstanding recycling from Tuesday 9 and Wednesday 10 June.
We were unable to collect garden waste from Strensall and North Moor estate (Huntington) due to the capacity issues.
This garden waste will be collected on the evening of Thursday 11 June. Please present your containers for collection by 7.00am.
Outstanding garden collections from Wednesday 10 June have been completed.
